The Parable of the Hare and the Tortoise: Small Worlds, Diversity, and System Performance
25 Pages Posted: 10 Nov 2005
Date Written: October 2005
Whether as team members brainstorming, or cultures experimenting with new technologies, problem solvers communicate and share ideas. This paper examines how the structure of these communication networks can affect system-level performance. We present an agent-based model of information sharing, where the less successful emulate the more successful. Results suggest that where agents are dealing with a complex problem, the more efficient the network at disseminating information, and the higher the velocity of information over that network, the better the short run and lower the long run performance of the system. The dynamic underlying this result is that an inefficient network is better at exploration than an efficient network, supporting a more thorough search for solutions in the long run. This suggests that the efficient network is the hare - the fast starter - and the poorly connected network is the tortoise - slow at the start of the race, but ultimately triumphant.
Keywords: Advocacy and Persuasion, Information Technology, Public Management, Science¸ Technology and Public Policy
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
Do you have a job opening that you would like to promote on SSRN?
A Theory of Fads, Fashion, Custom, and Cultural Change as Informational Cascades
By Sushil Bikhchandani, Ivo Welch, ...
By Jeremy Bulow and Paul Klemperer
Being Efficiently Fickle: A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Choice
By Jackson A. Nickerson and Todd Zenger
Local Discouragement and Global Collapse - a Theory of Information Avalanches
Informational Herding and Optimal Experimentation
By Lones Smith and Peter Norman Sorensen
Donor Herding and Domestic Debt Crisis
By Yohane Khamfula, Montfort Mlachila, ...
Strategic Experimentation: A Revision
By Patrick Bolton and Christopher Harris
Informational Externalities, Herding and Incentives
By Lluis Bru and Xavier Vives
The Effects of Self-Reinforcing Mechanisms on Firm Performance
By Erik Den Hartigh, Fred Langerak, ...